


How Jen and Clara Got All Six Cats

by HannahTheScribe



Series: I’ll Give You [9]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Bisexual Character, Bisexual Character of Color, Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Female Character of Color, Bisexuality, Character(s) of Color, Companion Piece, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Female Character of Color, Female Characters, Female Protagonist, Female Relationships, Female-Centric, First Meetings, Fluff, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Character of Color, LGBTQ Female Character, LGBTQ Female Character of Color, LGBTQ Themes, Love, Love at First Sight, Married Characters, Married Couple, Married Life, Mental Health Issues, Nightmares, No Lesbians Die, One Shot, POV Female Character, POV Queer Character, POV Third Person, Past Tense, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Queer Character, Queer Culture, Queer Families, Queer Friendly, Queer Themes, Realistic, Romance, Strong Female Characters, Useless Lesbians, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:08:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29029929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HannahTheScribe/pseuds/HannahTheScribe
Summary: Jen just meant to get one cat to keep her company; the other five and the wife were a bonus.Backstory companion of theI'll Give Youseries. Can be read independently.  Dedicated to cat namers StormSeason and amatalefay.Or, the one Jen/Clara story that's fun for the whole furry family.
Relationships: Jen Lundqvist/Clara Chen
Series: I’ll Give You [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1867054
Comments: 14
Kudos: 12





	How Jen and Clara Got All Six Cats

**Author's Note:**

> Want to take the survey and share your opinions about this series? Find the survey [here](https://forms.gle/h2pho3vavpzNT1jr5).
> 
> Want a physical copy or ebook? Find Book One and The First IGY Companion on [Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Hannah-The-Scribe/e/B08NPX9Q4L). 
> 
> Want fun extras like fonts and audio? Check [here](https://hannahthescribe.com/igy/).
> 
> Want more, and have something in mind? Request short stories for this series [here](https://hannahthescribe.com/igy-requests/).
> 
> Want more? Find the whole series on [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1867054) along with my [other works](https://archiveofourown.org/series/2034871).
> 
> Want the reality? Read my BDSM nonfiction on [Service Slave Secrets](http://www.serviceslavesecrets.com/) or [FetLife](https://fetlife.com/users/7113554/posts/5648128).
> 
> Want a taste of the trainee life? Find my BDSM education classes [here](https://serviceslavesecrets.com/events/).

**1**

The animal shelter was having an adoption event, and evidently, the entire city Jen had just moved back to showed up.

The cluster of floor to ceiling fenced areas had plenty of cats, but it also had far too many people, and instead of fighting them for a feline’s attention and trying to avoid getting too close to anyone, pulse racing, she took to wandering the nearby rows of empty cubby like cages.

She heard a shuffling sound as she paced nervously, trying to figure out why she was still here, and realized that one of them, in the bottom row, wasn't empty. She crouched next to it and examined the tag. Detective Hounds. Male. One year old. A dark brown tabby cowering in the back of the cage.

Lacking anything else to do, she sat nearby, one hand idly left at the door to Detective Hounds’ cage in case he wanted to do something other than cower. Checked her phone. Considered leaving. A lot of things had gotten easier in the last decade since leaving “home”, but too many people too close had not. Made her too jumpy.

Evidently, long nights alone had not either, though, which was what had her here looking for a companion.

She jumped when something touched her hand, and the cat that had approached enough to sniff her jumped back equally, but slowly, hesitantly approached again when she put her hand back, head butted her fingers after a few seconds.

An employee came over and asked if she was, “Finding everything okay?” Probably wondering what she was doing alone back here.

“Fine,” she said, with the nod and smile of _leave me alone_ but thought better of it and added, as the employee almost walked off, “Hey, what’s this one doing back here?” with a careful gesture at the tabby.

“Oh, he just doesn’t do very well with crowds. Still very shy around people. We found him on the streets; looks like he got put through the wringer. If you think you can get him to come outta there, I’ll open it for you.”

“Sure.”

Detective Hounds tensed at the rattling of the keys but seemed familiar enough with the shelter employee. “There you go.” Walked off.

The cat approached Jen hesitantly, following her touch closer. Allowed a few scritches behind the ears with only one suspicious hiss. She withdrew her hand at that, but he approached and offered a few curious licks.

Some kid playing with another cat over by all the people made some ruckus and Detective Hounds bristled, but didn’t bolt back into the cage. “Hey.” Very soft strokes of standing up fur. “You’re okay.”

After a few seconds, he nuzzled back against her hand when it was near his head. She sat with him for a bit and then managed to get him swaddled up in her jacket, wondered if cat fur clung to leather, and figured she’d find out soon enough. “No more wringer for you, buddy.”

Detective Hounds offered a nervous _mrrp_ in response.

“Don’t worry. We’ll get you somewhere with less people. It’ll just be you and me.”

**2**

They adjusted to each other over the next month or so. Jen stopped grabbing a knife every time something jumped on her bed and Hounds stopped bolting under the furniture when she walked into the room. And while he was content to sleep on the far corner of the bed maybe twice a week until the first time she thrashed or cried out in her sleep, it was true that she had gone looking for more of a lap cat and hadn’t gotten it.

And so she found herself in some stranger’s house from Craigslist whose cat had gotten out and come back pregnant, examining the last of the litter.

“That isn’t a kitten,” she said, frowning at it. “It’s like, a really pretentious cotton ball.”

The stranger laughed. “Cute lil thing, though.”

And it was. Unlike Hounds, it immediately bounded over on its clumsy little baby legs at the hint of being picked up. Jen held it up—it felt, roughly, like picking up a torn up cotton ball with maybe a marble or two in the middle, as predicted. It waved its tail and tried to climb up her sleeve, first under the fabric and then over it, settling at her shoulder and pawing at her hair, long dark blonde layers and eventually swatting at her bangs.

Well, she could get this one in her lap, at least.

“She’ll do.”

“Whadda ya think you’ll name ‘er?”

“I…” The only word that sprang to mind immediately was _Fluffy._ Fluffy… fuzz… the cat was flicking its tail in her face… _pretentious cotton ball_ … “Fluffypants… fuzz… tail.” She was normally much better with words than this but, having not been given the chance to name Hounds, she forgot to come equipped with ideas. Did it work like sibling names? Detective Hounds and Fluffypants Fuzztail? “Doctor,” she said.

“What?”

“Dr. Fluffypants Fuzztail.”

The woman gave her an, _Are you fucking high?_ look, but said, “Well, s’more original than ‘er two brothers, Snowball and Snowball.”

**3**

Hounds liked Fluffy better than he liked Jen at times and was very protective of her, once he got past his initial suspicion. He gave Jen this look when she got home with Fluffy—she’d tried to warn him—like, _Are you fucking kidding me?_

“They promised it’s a cat and not a cotton ball.” She put Fluffy on the floor and Hounds glared at her from under the couch as she toddled over, examining a catnip filled stuffed mouse on the way. But he did sleep in his far corner of the bed that night even with Fluffy under Jen’s arm.

And then she was going to be done acquiring cats, until five weeks later, when she nearly decapitated herself with her seatbelt slamming on the brakes as what she could only guess was a cat at that distance and speed ran straight in front of the car like a moron.

She was on a winding back street and couldn’t help doing a double check that the cat—if it was a cat—had, in fact, gotten out of the way, nervous when she didn’t see it nearby. Was trying to peer through some bushes when she heard a mewing behind her, and saw the cat—yes, cat—completely intact and cowering under the car. “You fucking idiot,” she told it, though it came out as a sigh of relief.

No collar. No people in sight. Not close to any houses. She put the cat in the passenger seat and it stayed there as she took it to the vet’s office to check for a chip. Nothing. Put up posts in local pet groups. Nothing.

One more check on a posting to see if anyone responded. She’d actually come to like the dark gray tabby in the last week or so, if he was a bit more of a proximity cat than a lap cat, but not as skittish as Hounds, first meeting circumstances aside. And he’d taken quickly to Fluffy; Hounds was warming up. He was a bit of a troublemaker, still adjusting to using the litter box, scratching up the furniture, and getting into little skirmishes with Fluffy as they learned to get along. Still, she quietly clicked _delete_ on the online posts.

“I guess you’ll be wanting a name, too, then~?”

_Mew._

Well, she had a theme going, so she went with _Lord von… Whisker… ee… doo._ “Are you supposed to get better at this after three cats?”

Lord von Whiskeridoo swished his tail in response.

**4**

It had been a wild few days.

Fluffy and Whiskeridoo (at home after another month or so) warming to Clara immediately was one thing, but Hounds was all but a betrayal. Jen remembered looking at Hounds in Clara’s lap less than four hours after she got there, giving her a, _What?_ look as if this was his normal behavior, and being unable to think of anything other than, _Really, Hounds?_ and how badly she wanted to marry this girl she’d met four hours ago.

Her fiancee of three days and wife to be in four loved the cats immediately. Made jokes that they would be her step children. That was a fine way of dodging the fact Jen would have two _human_ adult stepchildren she had never met as of Saturday. Strangers to engaged in four hours and engaged to married in a week only left time for so much. And while they had covered the subject thoroughly from the fact that Jen had no desire to go anywhere near anything like parenting to how their merged finances would cover the younger’s college tuition, the emotional _idea_ of it, she tried to avoid. She'd understood very young that most of the human population wasn’t meant to be a parent, and she was no exception. The cats were enough. Granted, Clara’s two adopted half siblings were not children, nor did her half brother, only six years younger, even really think of her as his mom so much as some kind of ambiguous authority figure.

Amongst all the ceremony and party planning and vows and finding rings and paperwork and Clara moving in and everything else, the possibility of adopting another cat, together, in the process, sounded like no big deal. Clara hinted at it now and then and by the time she dropped in at breakfast that there was an adoption event on at the shelter today, Jen said, “Fuck it, let’s go.”

So they did.

Again, it seemed everyone in the city had the same idea, but it was a little easier by now, and it was a lot easier with Clara holding her hand, the _safe safe safe_ bell that already went off when Clara was nearby dulling the _danger danger danger_ of too many people.

She surveyed the cats in the area, trying to size up options, eyes setting on a calico when she turned around and noticed that Clara had sat on the floor and had a little black cat with tiny white fangs trotting right into her lap. The way Clara smiled. The way the little ball of fur curled up and got lost in Clara’s long hair and sweater of the same color, pawed at her bangs the way Fluffy had pawed at Jen’s.

 _Well,_ she thought, _that settles that._

The Marquis de Whiskerton (Lundqvist-Chen, though they were both keeping their own last names and only Jen signed the paperwork; _Jenevieve Lundqvist_ only got so weird a look after the cat’s name) came home with them after only twenty minutes of the employee who helped them with the paperwork going on about how black cats had trouble getting adopted.

“People are terrible,” Jen agreed, though she’d finally found one she liked along with cat number four.

**5**

Their one year anniversary was regarded as a mix of miracle and not a big occasion. They stayed in, ordered a nice dinner even Clara was enthusiastic about eating, reminisced, exchanged little presents, played a few overenthusiastic rounds of speed, slapping cards on top of each other’s hands and laughing, watched a few more episodes of the Netflix thriller they were binging in the evenings, Whiskerton curled up in Clara’s lap and hissing at Jen for daring to touch her, ever possessive, and Fluffy draped over Jen’s other arm.

It was about a week later that Clara texted her from across the house. _Hear me out_ and a Craigslist link.

And then it was, “Male tortoiseshells are rare, you know,” another woman whose cat had gotten out was saying, as if trying to sell them on this kitten. “Usually sterile.”

“We have to stop,” Jen said when they put him down on the floor at home. Hounds bolted. Whiskerton wound around Clara’s ankles protectively. “We’re way too many offensive lesbian stereotypes.”

General Furrington (Lundqvist-Chen) was a fine addition to the group, if he liked to steal their food and wailed when he could see the bottom of his bowl. He liked to wind around the humans’ ankles on the stairs and everywhere else, especially if Clara was attempting dance practice with the door open, though he tended to settle at the foot of the bed at night, or nearby but not too close when they sat, with Whiskeridoo.

**6**

“Oh, come on. It’s been three years since we impulse adopted a cat.”

Jen, thirty-seven now, looked at the link to the adoption event Clara had sent her while she spoke from the far side of the computer screen. “We can go look. No guarantees.”

“You know you want another one.” Clara, thirty-four now, had, she supposed, only gotten to be a part of acquiring the last two, rather than five.

She did, at least, feel as strangely instantly attached to this fat ten year old cat as Clara did. The orange tabby had some endearing quality about him, despite the not so thrilling facts Google on her phone told Jen about treating diabetic cats. Still, that was a problem for Clara, she decided, as (they added Professor) Bananas (and Lundqvist-Chen) settled in.

There were so many cumulative vet appointments over the years, getting everyone insulin and fixed and groomed and shots and chipped and everything else.

Bananas liked to pretend it was a coincidence when he was in the same room as one of the humans, and had different ideas about whose food or treats were whose than Furrington’s, but at least he wasn’t fighting Fluffy for a spot on Jen’s keyboard when she was working, or scaring Hounds too much, or fighting Whiskerton to get within three feet of Clara, or helping Whiskeridoo scratch up the couch instead of their scratching posts.

What a household.

Ah, their six quirky little beloved fur children.

**Author's Note:**

> Want to take the survey and share your opinions about this series? Find the survey [here](https://forms.gle/h2pho3vavpzNT1jr5).
> 
> Want a physical copy or ebook? Find Book One and The First IGY Companion on [Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Hannah-The-Scribe/e/B08NPX9Q4L). 
> 
> Want fun extras like fonts and audio? Check [here](https://hannahthescribe.com/igy/).
> 
> Want more, and have something in mind? Request short stories for this series [here](https://hannahthescribe.com/igy-requests/).
> 
> Want more? Find the whole series on [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1867054) along with my [other works](https://archiveofourown.org/series/2034871).
> 
> Want the reality? Read my BDSM nonfiction on [Service Slave Secrets](http://www.serviceslavesecrets.com/) or [FetLife](https://fetlife.com/users/7113554/posts/5648128).
> 
> Want a taste of the trainee life? Find my BDSM education classes [here](https://serviceslavesecrets.com/events/).


End file.
